Welcome to Film Apocalypse!

I liked Stupid Teenagers Must Die!
Unfortunately, I don't think that most people will look past the
budgetary limitations to appreciate the concept of this movie.

The general public doesn't seem to
understand the difference between indi films, low-budget films and
no-budget films. Basically, you can have an indi or low budget
film that looks just as good as a major studio blockbuster.
However, no-budget movies are typically made by a group of friends with
an old camcorder and look like crap. I'm not saying that I don't
enjoy them, but I just don't expect Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
when someone tells me that they're sending me a no-budget film.
Well, Stupid Teenagers Must Die is certainly not Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but for a no-budget film, it is quite an
entertaining movie!

The basic premise behind Stupid
Teenagers Must Die is a group of teenagers in the 1980s go to an old
haunted house to have a sťance and one by one people start getting
murdered (and getting naked!) The script is actually really good
and the acting was far better than most no-budget movies that I've seen...and
trust me, I've seen a few! Although most of the actors surprised
me with their talent, Jovan Meredith stands out as being particularly
awesome as Kane, the boyfriend turned group leader who starts out the
night thinking the whole sťance idea is lame but ends up being the guy
who saves the day (complete with 80s style Michael Jackson
jacket!). Lindsay Gareth also did a great job as Tiffany,
the hot blonde wearing a T-shirt with her own name on it; a T-shirt that
thankfully comes off during the movie (great acting and a hot body, you
can't beat that!). I would watch another movie with either Jovan
Meredith or Lindsay Gareth just because they were in it. Devin
Marble (as Alfie) and the beautiful Renee Dorian (as Madeline) are excellent
as the 'Bad' couple in charge of the night's entertainment. I
can't leave out Will Deutsch as Ryan the nerd who did a great job of
capturing the 80s nerd character! Really, I could go on about most
of the cast. Director Jeff C. Smith was lucky to work with such a talented
group; especially considering the lack of a budget! And with so
many great performances, I have to think that Jeff himself must have had
a lot to do with the great acting. So anyway, they've got the 80s stereotypical
characters, the 80s clothes and even the 80s bad slasher movie
dialog. Surprisingly, I think the story and the script of Stupid
Teenagers Must Die are
quite a bit better than most of the big-budget movies from the 80s in
the genre that this movie is parodying.

The movie did suffer from
a no-budget image quality, poor lighting and bad editing. I think
in mechanical terms, this is worse than the average even for a no-budget
movie (especially the lighting), but the story and acting saved it for me. The two
songs over the end credits were funny. It's too bad that they
suffered from a poor audio quality that matched the quality of the
filming. I think the rest of the musical score was supposed to
sound like 80s music and not the post Nine Inch Nails electronica of
which I was reminded. Overall, the score wasn't too distracting,
but it would have added a lot to the movie if the music had been better.

Overall, I enjoyed the
movie. I would love to see it re-edited and with a better score,
but I guess you can't really fix some of the filming issues. It's
really too bad that the quality wasn't better because the script and
acting were really above avarage!